“Why didn’t you tell them?”
“Because they would look at me the way you are now.”
“I’m sorry,” she says eventually. “I had to ask, but I do believe you.”
“Okay,” I say, even though it isn’t and I’m not.
“I know we don’t ever say it, but I do love you.”
“I love you too,” I reply.
When she leaves the room, I cry for the first time since my daughter died.
Losing someone you truly love always feels like losing a part of yourself. Not Rachel—that was lust—I mean my sister. We might not have always been close—she never approved of my choice of wife, and I never approved of her choice of, well, anything—but I always thought she’d be the one to unplug the fan if the shit ever hit. I guess I was wrong, because it feels like something got broken between Zoe and me tonight. Something that can’t be fixed.
I sit alone in the semi-dark for a while, finishing the wine she probably left here deliberately, knowing that I would need it. When the bottle is empty and the house is silent again, I walk back over to the answering machine. Then I delete the message.
Sometimes it feels like I don’t know who I am anymore.
Her
Wednesday 04:30
I wake up covered in sweat and not knowing where or when I am.
The first thing that comes to the surface is her, my little girl. It is always the same.
Then I remember the hotel, and the drinks—before and after my embarrassing encounter with Richard—and I squeeze my eyes shut. As though if I keep them closed for long enough, it might be possible to delete all of my memories.
I was having a nightmare before I woke up.
I was running through the woods, and I was scared of something or someone that was chasing me. I fell, and as I was lying in the dirt, someone came into view then stood towering over my body, holding a knife. I was screaming for help in the dream, and now my throat hurts, as though I might have been screaming in real life.
I’m probably just dehydrated. I’d give anything for a soft drink right about now. I turn on the lights and am surprised to see a bottle of still mineral water by the bed. I don’t remember putting it there, but I silently thank my past self for being so thoughtful. I twist off the cap and gulp down the chilled liquid, so cold it is as though it has just been taken out of the fridge.
I check my phone and see that it was a text from Jack that woke me. For some reason it makes me feel better to know that he is having trouble sleeping too. It’s not sweet, but it is short, just four of his favorite words arranged in a familiar order:
We need to talk.
Not at four in the morning we don’t.
I climb out of the bed and creep over to the minibar, in search of a little something to help me get back to sleep. I fear I might have emptied it completely before I passed out, but gasp when I see that it is actually fully stocked. I look in the bin, but it is empty. I was sure I had sat on the bed eating snacks and drinking alone last night, but that must also have been a dream.
I open a miniature bottle of scotch and knock it back, then I notice the photo on the desk, the one that I found in the jewelry box at my mother’s house yesterday. We’re all there. Five young teenage friends the night before it happened, some of us with no knowledge of what was to come. I’ve spent so many years trying to forget these girls and now, once again, they are all that I can think about. I remember when we first met.
* * *
The grammar school was my mother’s idea. I used to be cleverer back then—before all the alcohol drowned my brain cells—too clever for my own good, she used to say. Without my father, there was simply no way to pay private school fees. I had to finish my education somewhere, and she thought that St. Hilary’s would be the next best fit.
It wasn’t.
The all-girls school was a twenty-minute walk from our house, but Mum insisted on driving me there on my first day—probably to make sure I went in—and pulled up right outside the gates. She’d bought an old white van, and had her brand-new company name stenciled on the side: Busy Bees Professional Cleaning Services. It was like a tin can on wheels.
I could see people staring at us, and it, as though it were an ancient relic that belonged in a museum, not on the road. I didn’t want to get out of the van, or go into St. Hilary’s, but I didn’t want to let my mother down either. I knew she had sweet-talked my way into the school mid-term.
Mum was the headmistress’s cleaner—she seemed to be cleaning for half the village by then—and I think she persuaded the woman to take pity on me and us. I was getting used to her calling in little favors here and there. Cleaning for influential people and local businesses had its benefits, including free bread from the bakers, and just-past-their-prime flowers from the florist. She always did whatever she needed to do, to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads. I tried to look happy and grateful about it as I stared up at the imposing brick building, but my first impressions were that the school looked like a Victorian asylum, with its ancient-looking sign above the main door, its name carved into the stone: